[Novalug] it stopped working (booting)

Jon LaBadie novalugml@jgcomp.com
Tue Apr 29 15:18:53 EDT 2008


On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 06:42:10PM -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> Peter has some good suggestions, but the fact that XP boots and that you 
> get messages from Fedora means that things are getting past the BIOS. 
> And a bad battery is likely to scramble the NVRAM settings, so that 
> should be checked as well. And try reseating all the connectors too. And 
> don't forget to defrag the Floating Point Unit. Just Kidding about that 
> last one.
> 
> JIM
> 
> Peter Larsen wrote:
> >Jon LaBadie wrote:
> >>A year ago I inherited my mom's Compaq 1630NX.  I upgraded it to
> >>a dual core x64 3800, bumped ram from 0.5 to 2.5 GB and added a disk.
> >>More recently (a month ago) I added a PCI-E video card.  No other
> >>HW changes since then.
> >>
> >>Been working fine with Windows XP (home) and my added OpenSuSE 10.2
> >>and Fedora 8.  At least until last evening.  Now neither linux, nor
> >>their "failsafe" modes, nor two live CD's I've tried will boot.
> >>WinXP still does however.
> >
...
> >
> >>Here are the last 4 messages from a Fedora 8 boot.  It hangs thereafter.
> >>
> >>  ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:09.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
> >>
> >>  CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 0000 0000 0000 0004
> >>
> >>  Bank 4: b200 0000 0007 0f0f
> >>
> >>  Kernel Panic - not syncing: cpu context corrupt
> >
> >
> >>Do the messages suggest something specific to anyone?
> >>
> >>I'll break out my ultimate boot cd and run memtest86 overnight,
> >>but this doesn't seem like memory does it?
> >
> >This doesn't look like it's a memory issue. I would check the heat and 
> >bios as stated above. You may even try to do an XP install boot - I'm 
> >pretty sure you'll see the same problem.
> >
> >Since you added hdd, memory and a bigger CPU - did you check if the 
> >PSU can keep up? Some of the old Dell/Compaq/HP boxes that I saw for 
> >Win98 wasn't equipted with enough PSU wattage to run with everything 
> >equipted. If you JUST changed things within the last month that could 
> >be it. Otherwise, it sounds like the OS retrieves different 
> >information about what your system can do, than what's actually possible.


OK, no success yet.  Here is some of the new tests and observations.

Compaq's bios is very simplistic.  Little to change from the defaults.
One that I did try was to disable any devices I was not using (parallel
port, 1394, ...).

Thinking it may be heat related, I let it sit powered off for several
hours.  Hung at the same spot, just 10 seconds after grub menu.  Probably
would not have overheated in that time.

Ran memtest86+ overnight.  It found a single, consistent (3 passes)
1 bit error.  I pulled the pair of 256MB sticks, leaving the pair
of 1GB sticks.  Still will not boot, but memory test is clean overnight.

BTW memtest was from an "Ultimate Boot CD" which does boot to its OS
from the optical drive.  Recall that two linux live CD's do not.

Tried adding the noapic and lnoapic options to the boot line but still
hangs at the same point.

The message above refering to ACPI ...

  ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:09.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16

mentions IRQ 16.  Booting into windows and looking at the IRQ assignments,
there is nothing listing IRQ 16.  Is it likely Windows and Linux IRQ
assignments differ?

BTW what is "GSI 17" in the same message?

jl
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon@jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
 12027 Creekbend Drive		(703) 787-0884
 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)



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